As they
bid farewell to the Year of the Dragon, the fortune tellers warn that the
"black water snake" that emerges to replace it on February 10 -- the
first day of the Lunar New Year -- could be a venomous one that brings disaster.

Previous
Snake years have been marked by the September 11, 2001 terror strikes that
killed nearly 3,000 people, the crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy
protests and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

The
1929 stock market plunge that heralded the Great Depression also occurred in a
snake year.

Uh, oh.

And then AFP adds this:

Astrologers
say this year's snake is identified with the element of water -- symbolising
fear -- that sits on top of the fire element, representing joy and optimism.
They say conflict between the two will bring turbulence in May.

"This
is a disaster year... a lot of things will not go smoothly," said
Singapore's "Grand Master" Tan Khoon Yong of geomancy consultancy Way
OnNet Group.

"The
European Union may split, the euro may be in trouble," the 59-year-old
said, adding that the bloc would be threatened by division in May.

Of course, Snake years are not all bad.

True enough, Mao Zedong was born in a Snake year. But so were
Pablo Picasso, Abraham Lincoln and Jessica Chastain.

If you think that all of this hooey is
not very American, look at it this way. In this country, February 10, 2013 ushers
in The Year of Ken Stabler!